


Where we left off

by Clockwork



Series: The Other Half [1]
Category: Whitechapel (TV)
Genre: Gen, Murder Mystery, Post Series, chapters, continuing series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-27
Updated: 2018-02-27
Packaged: 2019-03-24 22:42:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13820973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clockwork/pseuds/Clockwork
Summary: Picking up where the series ended, Kent gets on board with Miles that they need to find out why Iver's was harassing them. Likely this will continue on for a bit, exploring the idea of the supernatural mixing with the resulting mundane answers of the series.





	Where we left off

What had been meant to be a celebration quickly turned into another wake. Another time of quietness and drinking, meeting one another’s eyes and quickly looking away before someone said something. 

Instead Erica was holding Finley’s head to her shoulder as she convinced him to put down his last pint. Riley had already left to go home to her kids, and Ed had muttered something about a new book, looked horrified at himself for saying it, and scurried out of the room. Emerson had stood by the bar though, nursing a single pint and not saying a word as he fought to not constantly watching the door with furtive glances. 

“He’s not coming.”

The voice was close, to his side that leaned into the bar, and Kent jerked, heart racing as he spun around to face the Sergeant. 

“I… He… wait, what?”

“I said he’s not coming, and you should either drink that beer or go home.”

Emerson swallowed hard, glancing over his shoulder at the door before looking back at Miles.

“I didn’t think he would. Not after…”

“Course you did. We all hoped he would. He’s got that review tomorrow and then everything’ll be back to normal. Give ‘im a few days to deal with this.”

Just like they were. Dealing with another death instead of an arrest and trial. Well, multiple deaths, but still. Dealing with whatever that Ivers had done to them and the shop. All they were all doing was dealing, and some of them better than others. Except, Emerson. 

From the beginning he hadn’t really dealt with anything. He’d soldiered on, ignoring the physical pain, the guilt, the emotional pain. There hadn’t been a bright spot one until the night they had been ready to celebrate the arrest of the gang, that they could fix things around them, and then the call came in. 

The explosion had made national news. A tragedy to the world where no one knew how it had happened given all had died. All but one, though no one knew that woman had been there, stepping off the curb and sending those in the van careening to their death. To the world it was a tragedy. To the man and women under CI Chandler, it was something so much more.

It was another loss. Another case to be held against them. It was the provocateur. Even if everyone else was ignoring it. Even Ed. Everyone but Miles. 

“Kent, come back to the station with me. I want to show you something. I need to show this to someone.”

Two days ago Ed had refused to listen, and now he refused to talk to Miles at all about it. Or much of anything. He had to talk to someone about it though, even if that someone was Kent.

***

Emerson stared at the pages laid out over the table, chronologically laid out from centuries before to the print outs from the surveillance that Miles had done on his own. 

“You… you think…”

The words don’t come to him, and he’s not sure what to say.

“Yeah, I know. It’s crazy. I got it from Ed, so trust me. I know.”

“Do you have any idea how old she would have to be?”

“It’s. Crazy. I know. But you going to tell me these don’t all look the same?”

Kent bent over the pages, shifting from one to the next. Taking his time, slowly comparing them. 

“Well, these are drawings and I can’t… but these…” He put the surveillance print out and the one of the Cray brothers side by side. “These… maybe these are the same. But again…”

“I know. If she’s fifty like she looks in this picture, then she’s got to be at least ninety now. Or older. And not popping in and out of the station, and running around book signings stirring up trouble. I get it. There’s no way.”

“Except… it’s right here.”

Miles paused, staring at Kent for a long time. He had expected another fight, to be told he was old and crazy. Except maybe Kent believed him. 

“Yeah, it’s right here. Which means…”

“We need to talk to Ed,” Kent said, gathering up the pictures. 

“No. No we don’t. He’s being a horse’s ass and I’m not getting into a shouting match with him again.”

Emerson was already gone, pictures in hand.

“That is not what I wanted,” he growled, swearing under his breath and following after Kent.

***

“This again?” 

Ed sat back, removing his glasses and looking to Miles directly, as if he had been the one to put Kent up to his. The Sergeant raised his hands, shaking his head as if to say this was all on the kid.

“Ed, stop. I … I need you to listen… Please?”

Both men stared at Emerson, his tone harsher than either had heard from him in a long time. Miles leaned against the corner of the desk, and Ed waved a hand at Kent.

“Okay. Go on then.”

“I don’t want to hear that it’s impossible, or crazy, or anything else. What I want to know, and you’re the only man that can tell me this but… How could this happen. If this woman,” he said, stabbing a finger at the image from the highwaymen. “And these women,” he said, stabbing at the next three images. “If they could all be her, Louisa Ivers, how would that be possible?”

“Well, logically it co…” 

“No, not logically. How.”

Again that tone that was so uncommon to Kent and Ed didn’t even seem to think of arguing again as he looked at the pictures and not the normally timid man before him. 

“Well… Narrow that down with what we have would be hard. Immortals exist in every culture, throughout history, in every land.”

Miles bit back a sigh, realizing that as much as he wanted answers, they were in for one of _those_ lectures. 

“To narrow down one type of immortal to what exactly this type of one might be?” Asked as he waved his glasses at the papers, pushing to his feet. “We could be looking at dozens if not hundreds of options.”

“Narrow it down,” Kent encouraged. “Start with here. Here in the Isles. Look at what she’s been doing. Yes, people have died, but does it feel like those deaths were the intent or the aftermath.”

Ed frowned then, heavy and dark, chewing on the earpiece of his glasses as he folded his arm over his chest. Miles had to admit, Kent had managed what he hadn’t been able to do. He had Buchan hooked. 

“You’re looking at a trickster then. Someone that stirs up hate and discontent, and likely does it for a laugh. She, it if you prefer, would see this as a game. We are just playing pieces and they’re merely doing all they can to make us dance as they want. The deaths are just part of the game. If they wanted to kill people there are much easier ways to do so. Thinking on that…”

He paused, considering that before shaking his head. Not in denial but in that way that says a person truly wants to dismiss what they’re thinking. 

“We are the game then. Jimmy and Johnny’s heavy hand, the bodies in the river, the ergot poisoning, all of it from the Ripper murders on have been their game, and we were the pawns they sought to put in motion. The rest, for lack of a better term, were collateral damage.”

“Some damage,” Miles muttered, really not liking the sound of this. “Why us?”

“That would be the question, wouldn’t it? Perhaps something someone here did, though…” Ed’s gaze fell once more to the pictures. “No, it’s not us. I mean, it’s us but not us,” he said, gesturing between them. “If all of these _are_ indeed the same woman than it’s not about us, but about where we are. It’s about Whitechapel.”

Which was, if they were honest, the obvious answer. 

“Not just Whitechapel,” Miles said. “It’s about the cops here. All of these were people she set into motion against the cops.”

Nodding, Ed considered that. “Perhaps. If nothing else, she saw the cops as the best target for her games. By your very nature, you would act out against her actions giving her someone to play against.”

“So what then? I mean, what kind of immortal would do this?” Kent looked uncomfortable with the turn of the talk. Maybe he’d hoped to be told they were wrong. Instead they were facing a reality that shouldn’t be real. 

Weaving his way around the desk and through the stacks of his own making, Ed pulled a book off the shelf. It was old and dusty, which wasn’t that odd in that place, and yet he held it with a much more careful reverence than he did others. Laying it down on the desk atop the pictures, he opened it to an already marked page. 

“If I had to guess, and it’s a guess mind you, but what we’re dealing with could be… and let me stress that this is not like other times. I will not say this with certainty…” A problem since he had nearly died, though it went back further than that to deaths Ed felt he should have prevented. “But we’re dealing with a fir darrig.”

“What the bloody hell is a fear derringer?” Miles demanded to know, rolling his eyes.

“No, a fir darrig. They’re…”

“They’re fairy folk,” Kent said, not even realizing he was taking a step back as if that would protect him. “He’s saying we’re dealing with fairies.”


End file.
